


Restoration

by Aithilin



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Ending, Canonical Character Death, Fix-it fic, M/M, Post-Endgame, endgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 16:24:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14084895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: It would have been easier if it was just a story. One that he had been separated from through lifetimes and circumstances. One that he had read through old texts, like all the others; stored in some dusty tome on the shelves of the Citadel library.Ignis in the moments after the new sunrise.





	Restoration

It would have been simple if it was just fate. If the story of Noctis as a martyr could just carry on as it was, empty and lost to the history of a rebuilt Eos. It would have been easier to swallow, if that’s where it had ended; with years after darkness, the sun rose and healed the world’s ills. 

It would have been easier if it was just a story. One that he had been separated from through lifetimes and circumstances. One that he had read through old texts, like all the others; stored in some dusty tome on the shelves of the Citadel library. 

He had read plenty of stories when he was younger. He never thought about what it would have been to live through the events he dutifully learnt and recited for history lessons. To watch the heroes of the kingdom suffer and die to create the stories that lived on with the rest of Lucis— the Rogue, the Wise, the Wanderer, the Conquerer, the Just. He never thought about them as anything other than just the pillars propping up the lineage of his own beloved prince. His own king. 

He wondered, in a fleeting, passing moment, if they had loved ones who suffered as he did now.

Ignis recalled the chime of the sword clattering to the stone floor of the throne room every time he entered. He remembered stumbling at the steps in an effort to get to Noctis, his voice choked in his own throat by his worst fears. By the visions that had plagued him since Altissia of Noctis’ fate. He had stumbled where Gladiolus had rushed past, and felt Prompto’s hands on him to hold him back as he heard the panic in Gladio’s voice. As he heard the choked off shock caught in Prompto’s throat that had threatened to fell them both then and there.

He had barely choked out a soft “Noct…” before he realised that there was something else happening. 

The Ring was the last piece to the puzzle; the last portion of the Crystal that would grant Noctis the power greater than the Astrals. That would threaten to burn him away when his task was done. The Ring was meant to destroy Noctis. It had been destroyed with the Crystal. Or it should have been; it’s duty done and it’s shard returned to the its own point of origin. 

Ignis will always remember the clatter of the Sword of the Father as Gladio threw it aside like a cast-off and broken weapon rather than the relic it was. 

He would always remember the panic and pleading in Gladio’s voice and the soft denials from Prompto at his side. Holding him back from his king. As he struggled to find the steps, the words beyond; “what’s happened? Where’s Noct?”

And then there was the booming voice that followed. The reverberating voice that broke through the stillness of the city air. It rattled the glass that still remained intact in the Citadel, that shattered the new sunlight across the room and steps, and bathed the bloody scene in gold. 

Bahamut’s voice, Ignis would later learn. When he had it in him to care.

“The King’s duty is done.”

Ignis remembered wanting to rage at the creature that had dared to call itself a god for all these millennium. He remembered feeling the rage burning through him— as bright and hot as the day he wore the Ring to defend Noctis— as the voice echoed around them. As Prompto tried to pull him back from the throne, as Gladio staggered back on the stairs and Ignis could hear the sudden stop in his footsteps. He wanted to surge forward instead, to reclaim at least some part of their agency in this whole damned story. 

Because none of them had deserved this. 

Noctis hadn’t deserved this. 

It had taken a moment to realise what he was seeing after that. That he even was seeing. That the wounds that had left him blind and living in a more complete darkness than any of the others had started to heal. That the darkness he had grown accustomed too was shaping itself into something else. It had taken a moment to realise that there was sunlight breaking through the ruins of the city, and the broken walls of the Citadel had opened up to let the dawn in. It had taken a moment to pause and realise that he could see at all, before his eyes— vision blurry and soft-edged— rested on the image of Noctis on the throne. 

He could see the sunlight cascading through the shattered walls and the broken windows. The majesty of the throne room that had awed him as a child— had intimidated him with it’s formality and cavernous echoes as King Regis commanded from his imposing throne— was lost as everything he was pinpointed Noctis slumped on the throne, stained with blood in a wound that Ignis imagined must have mirrored his father’s deathblow. He could see the shadow of Astral wings made of swords spread across the throne room, and more familiar shades of the other Six who had been gathered a decade ago. The air was heavy with Leviathan’s salt sea air, and the ground trembled with the steps of the Titan’s movement in the city. The inching, clawing tendrils of frost skirting the open ruins and rubble to cast that glittering light against the facade that Ignis remembered once glittered around King Regis when he was introduced, and once haloed the young prince who had been so uncertain of his path. 

And he saw Luna. Sweet, unmovable, unconquerable Lunafreya. Whose faith had brought her to ruin and tempered her kindness to the weapon of the Astrals. 

He saw— even as Gladio hesitated on the steps to the throne, torn between rushing to Noctis and stepping back from the gods that had been gathered in the fading light of the empty Crystal— how lightly Luna stepped to Noctis’ side and how delicate her touch to him was. He saw, through broken vision that he had lived without for a decade, the light that flowed from her like an ethereal river and threatened to drown the fallen king where he was slumped. He saw her kind features, more from memory, as she knelt to Noct, and breathed life back into him. 

It had all been wishful thinking. He thought. Though Prompto’s stuttered confusion broke the divine silence around them. 

He had rushed past Gladio then. He had scrambled up the steps, freed from Prompto’s grip in his shock. And he had hurried to comfort Noctis before the light of the Oracle— the last light of the Last Oracle— had faded. He saw her smile to him, and realised that her powers were spreading across Eos now, with the sun. That she was the healing light herself. 

And he knew that it didn’t matter. Not now. Not when he could hear the gasping breath from Noct as his body struggled back to life before the injuries had fully healed. 

“Thank you,” Ignis had barely managed it as he caught Noctis before the king could fall from the throne. He had barely managed, vision still blurred, to ease Noctis down, weak pulse growing stronger under his hands. “Thank you, Luna.”

And all at once the throne room was emptied of any divine presence again. It was quiet and still, with only Noctis’ weak coughing filling the broken room. And Gladio was by his side as Prompto skittered to a halt within reach, poised between shock and awe and hope. 

“Easy, Noct,” Ignis tried to soothe, to position Noctis so he could recover, so he could breathe. So he could return.

Apparently even the gods agreed that Noct hadn’t deserved the fate that had been set out for him. 

Or Lunafreya had beaten them to the decision to spare them the tragedy of history. 

Ignis didn’t care which it was. Not as he sat by the bed, the dusty barracks from the nearby Kingsglaive headquarters still serving their purpose for Cor and the faithful team that had followed them through the years. Not as he waited, in the darkened room, his eyes still sensitive to the light with each dawn, among the rows of empty beds that once housed the king’s soldiers. 

Not as he heard the telltale signs of Noct waking, chest constricted by the bandages that were barely needed now. 

“Welcome back, your majesty.”

“Iggy?”

“Of course.” 

He remembered when Noct had awoken in Altissia after the trial with Leviathan. He remembered the pain in the prince’s voice and the regret that he had been part of the source of it. He remembered the grief and confusion, and the unfamiliar stumbling as they all struggled to recover from the blow that had been dealt back then. 

He much preferred it now. To see the confusion himself, and to see Noct watching him as he was watched. The realisation that they were both still breathing, and living, and had (with a tentative hope) years ahead of them together.

“Your eyes.”

“Restored. I assure you.”

“Iggy—”

“It was beautiful, Noct. The sunrise you brought back to us.”

In a few minutes, Ignis would go to fetch the others, and Cor. He would share the good news that the King had woken. 

But for now— for a few heartbeats longer— he could just enjoy the sight of Noct breathing and smiling, even if it was from a somewhat sterile bed. He could enjoy the scruff and softness of his older features, the sharpness to his face lessened by the quiet in his eyes. He could see his king as he was again. “Beautiful.”

And he could enjoy the soft, relieved smile that Noct gifted him as his hand was taken in both of Noct’s own.


End file.
